We separated. I've mentioned here before that 5 years ago, I stopped overcompensating for him and the result was that everything in our lives are falling apart now, because he didn't pick up the slack.   We had a bad week with a perfect storm of all our issues and I asked for a separation.   First, he chose the path of least resistance in a conflict, which was going against me, even though he had agreed with me on what needed to happen.  Then he made a terrible financial decision that I had asked him to find out more information about before he did it.   I told him he needed to figure out a budget.  I told him to get a spreadsheet, and list all of our debts and monthly payments.  He agreed.  Then he spent the evening "managing my expectations,"  looking up salary ranges and insurance costs.  While he was doing this, I was getting more and more frustrated.  I told him that we couldn't do anything until we knew what was coming in and what was going out and it was time he understood what that looked like.   He wouldn't budge.  Later he said he was stuck in a loop.   But as the saying goes, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.  He showed me that no matter what I said and did, he still expected me to do all the hard stuff.  

He moved in with his mother, who actually does need looking after.   That was another issue we had. His mother is really old and probably shouldn't be living on her own and he just wasn't doing anything about it.  It has been killing me not to take that on, but the woman has four children. There's no reason I should be the one to step in. 

We've had a lot of breakthroughs - he was complaining that his stomach was bothering him and I described how he felt.  He was surprised I knew.  I said "That's stress.  I've felt like that every day for years." 
He has started looking for a new job.  He applied to 15 jobs in the first week and agreed that it was more jobs than he'd ever applied for the entire time we've been together (which included years-long periods of unemployment). 
He told the marriage counselor that he was getting mixed signals from me because I kept answering questions with "I don't care, do what you want."  Marriage counselor said "I think she's saying that she wants you to make your own decisions," and it was like a lightbulb went off!  He didn't realize that before?!  I mean, I knew I made all the major decisions, but I didn't know he was relying on me for EVERY decision.  (Not that he would go along with them - I'd make the decision and then he'd decide afterwards if he wanted to do that or not.)

So things were good for a while.  We were getting along.  His mom was getting help.  But we didn't make a clean break.  It's been about a month now and he's been spending four days a week at our house.  All for legitimate reasons - the kids had an event, or he had to work from home because his car was in the shop and his mom doesn't have wifi.   However, we're falling back into old routines. Not good. 

I started expressing my concerns that now it was like he was a guest in our house - I was doing everything, and he was just hanging around.   This was the opposite of what I was trying to accomplish. 

Then this week, he overslept.  This was always a huge issue with us, but hasn't been in the last 5 years because he had to get up 2 hours earlier than I did, and so he could finally learn to do it on his own.  I wasn't even angry when I woke him up, but that was the kick in the pants he needed to realize he was letting me take over again.  He left again.  That was good. 

I don't know what is going to happen.  I don't know if I should make this a cleaner break or not, but things are moving in a better direction.